Ben Darwish and Shook Twins: Thursday, Jan. 19

Jazz meets rock meets folk meets...dubstep?

[FOLK-STEP] It’s an unseasonably bright January day;
sunlight pours through the windows of Caffe Vita and backlights Ben
Darwish’s ’fro. The local keyboardist-composer, 27, has a cerebral,
serious air about him—and indeed, Darwish takes composing seriously,
using terms like “half-time” and occasionally struggling to put heady
musical concepts into words.

It’s a strange
bedfellowship—but then, theirs is a strange project. On Jan. 19 at the
Alberta Rose Theatre, Darwish and Shook Twins (with guitarist William
Seiji Marsh and drummer Kevin Van Geem) will premiere The Clear Blue Pearl,
a 10-song “epic” that tells the story of “a couple on a quest for water
after a devastating drought,” set to music Darwish, a University of
Oregon music grad, describes as “fantasy folk-step.”

How that’ll sound is
anybody’s guess: The ensemble hasn’t recorded any material (though it
plans to) aside from a holiday tune (for WW’s annual holiday compilation) and a piano-driven, uplifting demo version of TheClear Blue Pearl’s final song. Darwish positions TheClear Blue Pearl
in the concept-album tradition, and says he set out to write his own
concept piece out of frustration with his lack of worldliness.

“I haven’t done a lot
of stuff that I would like to do, like travel,” the Portland native
says. “So I thought, why don’t I just make it up? I’ve always had kind
of a big imagination, but I haven’t really been able to use it until
now.”

The twins were drawn
to the project’s imaginativeness. “I love it when artists break out of
the box a little bit,” Katelyn Shook says. “You don’t always have to
write about looove and shit.”

The Clear Blue Pearl’s
“folk-step” tag, Darwish admits, is mostly for show. While the piece
features folk and dubstep elements prominently, embellishing traditional
harmonies with distinguishing dubstep characteristics like adagio tempo
and “wobble” bass, Darwish notes that it also bears the influence of
Tuvan throat singing. So…what is it?

“It’s just my music,”
Darwish says. “I feel like this, out of anything I’ve done, is…less
like a combination of two things, [more] like an original sound.”

Recent collaborations
have found Darwish playing everything from Afro-funk to minimalist jazz
instrumentals. But paradoxically, the more he mingles his sensibilities
with others’, the more distinctive they become.

“All these things
I’ve done are just becoming a melting pot,” Darwish says. “I feel like
I’m finally starting to find my own voice in composition.”

SEE IT: Ben Darwish and Shook Twins play the
Alberta Rose Theatre on Thursday, Jan. 19. 8:30 pm. $10. Minors must be
accompanied by a parent or guardian.